Lamps are widely used to provide outdoor and indoor lighting, and to serve illumination needs of other places. Indoor lighting is generally controlled by a touch switch or a remote control, without regard to whether it is day and night, while outdoor lighting (e.g., garden lights, lawn and street lamps, etc.) is generally controlled based on whether it is day and night in order to conserve power. In particular, outdoor lighting is generally controlled by a drive controller to be turned off during the day and to be turned on at night. The drive controller generally includes two parts: a power supply portion for enabling filtering, rectification, AC-DC power conversion (e.g., a buck converter), and other functions; and a switching control part for providing main power switch control, mode control and other functions. The switching control part can implement the power conservation aspects by using light exposure to detect day and night and thereby control the outdoor lighting to be turned off during the day and to be turned on at night.
Although a lighting control switch can provide power conservation in outdoor lighting systems as described above, this is conditioned that the lighting control switch is located outdoors such that it can receive and detect direct sunlight (e.g., so that it can determine ambient lighting conditions). However, if the drive controller and the lighting control switch for the outdoor lighting system are located indoors, then the control system will not work properly because it will not be able to detect daytime and nighttime conditions. In addition, it is assumed that; for real and practical needs such as for safety reasons, the drive controller is typically located indoors such as in an underground garage or in a room. Therefore, there is a problem in controlling outdoor lighting using a drive controller located indoors, where the drive controller is configured to apply lighting control based on day or night conditions, and where the drive controller is based on an existing switch control circuit.